Skip to main navigation Skip to search Skip to main content

Datasets of monthly reference agrohydrological variables for the rainfed agricultural region of Ethiopia (Ethio-AgHy)

Dataset

Description

Summary

The Ethio-AgHy reference agrohydrological dataset was developed using a modeling framework that integrates climate, soil, land use, and topographic data to simulate water balance components within the upper 60 cm soil layer of agricultural lands across Ethiopia. The database includes climatologies of the following variables:

Monthly mean and standard deviation (std) of actual evapotranspiration, ETa [mm/month]

Monthly mean and standard deviation (std) of reference evapotranspiration, ETo [mm/month]

Monthly mean and standard deviation (std) of surface runoff, RO [mm/month]

Monthly mean and standard deviation (std) of volumetric soil moisture, SMv [m^3/m^3]

Monthly mean and standard deviation (std) of soil moisture deficit, SMD [%]

Monthly mean and standard deviation (std) of soil aeration deficit, SAD [%]

Annual mean and standard deviation (std) of waterlogging intensity, WLI [days/year].

For each variable with a monthly climatology, data are stored in a single GeoTIFF file containing 12 bands, each representing one calendar month (January to December). In the metadata, months are abbreviated as: Jan, Feb, Mar, Apr, May, Jun, Jul, Aug, Sep, Oct, Nov, Dec. The waterlogging intensity (WLI) dataset, being annual, is provided as a single-band GeoTIFF. 

The datasets cover the rainfed agricultural regions of Ethiopia, bounded by latitudes 4.445° N - 15.046° N and longitudes 32.852° E - 44.085° E. Data are provided on a 500 m × 500 m spatial grid (2120 rows × 2250 columns). Grid indexing starts from the north, and cells with no data are assigned NaN values. All datasets are provided in the WGS 84 geographic coordinate system (EPSG:4326).

References

Funk, C. et al. The climate hazards infrared precipitation with stations - A new environmental record for monitoring extremes. Nat. Sci. Data 2, (2015).

Wakjira, M. T., Peleg, N., Burlando, P. & Molnar, P. Gridded daily 2-m air temperature dataset for Ethiopia derived by debiasing and downscaling ERA5-Land for the period 1981–2010. Data Br. 46, 108844 (2023).

Wakjira, M. T., Peleg, N., Molnar, P. & Burlando, P. Bias-Corrected and Downscaled ERA5-Land 2-m Air Temperature Dataset for Ethiopia for the Period 1981-2010. (2022) doi:10.3929/ethz-b-000546574.

Muñoz-Sabater, J. et al. ERA5-Land: A state-of-the-art global reanalysis dataset for land applications. Earth Syst. Sci. Data 13, 4349–4383 (2021).

Poggio, L. et al. SoilGrids 2.0: Producing soil information for the globe with quantified spatial uncertainty. Soil 7, 217–240 (2021).

Ross, C. W. et al. HYSOGs250m, global gridded hydrologic soil groups for curve-number-based runoff modeling. Sci. data 5, 180091 (2018).

Wakjira, M. T., Peleg, N., Six, J. & Molnar, P. Green water availability and water-limited crop yields under a changing climate in Ethiopia. Hydrol. Earth Syst. Sci. 29, 863–886 (2025).

USDA. Urban Hydrology for Small Watersheds. (1985).

SRTM. Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) Global. Distributed by OpenTopography. (2013) doi:10.5069/G9445JDF.

Allen, R. G., Pereira, L. S., Raes, D. & Smith, M. Crop Evapotranspiration. Irrigation and Drainage Paper No. 56 (1998).

Saxton, K. E. & Rawls, W. J. Soil Water Characteristic Estimates by Texture and Organic Matter for Hydrologic Solutions. Soil Sci. Soc. Am. J. 70, 1569–1578 (2006).
Date made available5 Nov 2025
PublisherWageningen University & Research

Cite this